Originally Posted by Tim SWe're interested in your feedback on some of the improvements we've made to the way we relay the information to you. If you've got any constructive comments or suggestions, please shout up.

i thought the article seemed very different, and i have to agree with the comments, although just 1 PCI slot is kinda pathetic IMO

lastly, i would say not have dual gigabit networking is weird, the chip probably costs like $0.10 or something to add ...... and you would get dual gigabit, weird for it to just be 10/100 .....

i have to say i only use 1 network port on my computer, but why not just add the $0.10 component to get dual gigabit, I'm sure there are people out there who will use the feature

Why do you guys test an Nvidia card on a Crossfire board? You did the same thing with that vanilla saphire board. Don't you think these crossfire boards have an affinity for ATi cards? I just couldn't see people going out and buying a 7900GTX with this board. Maybe the benchmarks would be more competitive with an ATi card on an Ati board like the Asus MVP strapped with an Nvidia card. Yes/no?

Originally Posted by NatureWhy do you guys test an Nvidia card on a Crossfire board? You did the same thing with that vanilla saphire board. Don't you think these crossfire boards have an affinity for ATi cards? I just couldn't see people going out and buying a 7900GTX with this board. Maybe the benchmarks would be more competitive with an ATi card on an Ati board like the Asus MVP strapped with an Nvidia card. Yes/no?

And I did see the dual card benchmarks with the 1900xtx's...

The reason is so that we can compare comparative platform performance on a level playing field. If there was more time, we'd test with both single X1900XTX and single 7900 GTX in all boards but that adds another day of testing to each review, near enough. If we had more resource, we'd be doing it. ;)

Originally Posted by NatureI see your points and agree, But if you have a 7900gtx or other high end Nvidia GPU(s) you would probobly buy an SLi board, right?

Why? SLI is (pardon my heresy) a waste of good money and resources. I'd rather just buy a good card now and buy a good card next generation to replace it. :)

It makes a lot of sense to stick with a nice, high end GPU and not worry about SLI, then just replace it when the time comes. Then again, as some of the old salts on the board will tell you, I had to be dragged away from my nice AGP slot kicking and screaming, as I was (and still am) a firm believer that PCI-E is largely a marketing hype. :)

Originally Posted by kwijibo"Four DDR2 memory slots supporting up to 32GB of DDR2-800 memory;"
Wow, how did you miss that typo? Relaying false information is never a good thing.

That's what ECS says, no reason not to believe them. Bit harsh there, dont you think?
You'd have to be running a 64bit system/OS to be able to address all 32gig but the board is made unspecific to what OS is used.

You dont have to buy a board just for Crossfire or SLI, you can buy one because it contians the features you want and possibly the future upgrade you intend to use. Perhaps you want to use the 2nd PCIe x16 slot for a RAID card?